NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy. By Joel Achenbach, Published: June 4

Quote:

The announcement Monday raised the obvious question of why the intelligence agency would no longer want, or need, two Hubble-class telescopes. A spokeswoman, Loretta DeSio, provided information sparingly. “They no longer possessed intelligence-collection uses,” she said of the telescopes.http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Blog post on using the new telescopes for planetary defense, asteroid prospecting, and Mars orbiter satellites:

_________________Single-stage-to-orbit was already shown possible 50 years ago with the Titan II first stage. Contrary to popular belief, SSTO's in fact are actually easy. Just use the most efficient engines and stages at the same time, and the result will automatically be SSTO.Blog: http://exoscientist.blogspot.com

Not really. At astronomical distances, the parallex from LEO is not very great. Coordinating orbital platforms for an interferometric array would be tricky.

I would be really surprised if these sats were really all that useful from a science perspective. Beyond the wear and tear on-orbit, they are probably running low on fuel. Also the optics and electronics are probably finely tuned to short ranged surface observation (spying), not for the long, far focused exposures of astronomical observation.

But it was nice of the NRO to offer them instead of just de-orbiting them.

I would be really surprised if these sats were really all that useful from a science perspective. Beyond the wear and tear on-orbit, they are probably running low on fuel.

I think NRO have given NASA the optics for spacecraft which were never built, not two operating satellites. Apparently this still saves about $250 million off the cost of whatever spacecraft NASA produces from them.

I would be really surprised if these sats were really all that useful from a science perspective. Beyond the wear and tear on-orbit, they are probably running low on fuel.

I think NRO have given NASA the optics for spacecraft which were never built, not two operating satellites. Apparently this still saves about $250 million off the cost of whatever spacecraft NASA produces from them.